1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for preserving and testing biologically genetic information, and particularly to a micro-carrier and a test method for identifying DNA, proteins and other complementary substances by using a bar code labeled micro-carrier.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Biotechnology has been developing quickly in recent years. Various products can be produced using molecular biology, biological cells, or other metabolites thereof by this technique, which can be extensively applied in the fields of pharmaceutical, pesticide, environmental protection, process development, and aquaculture.
The combination of biotechnology with electric technology is a trend; wherein the most attractive is the biochip and DNA chip (i.e. gene chip). In addition to silicon, the material of those chips can include absorbent materials such as glass, plant cellulose, gel, and organic polymers. The gene chip has various gene fragments neatly aligned and adhered onto a nail-sized chip, in which thousands upon thousands of gene fragments are accommodated. Users can select different kinds of gene chips based on their purposes.
The principle of the aforementioned gene chip is that different groups of gene fragments are adhered onto a chip, followed by immersion into a solution containing unknown genes labeled with fluorescence. If the fluorescence-labeled gene matches the specific gene fragment on the chip, a fluorescent signal retained thereon due to complementary combination will be observed by microscopy. Therefore, the unknown gene can be identified by the complementary sequence adhered on the chip.
Under the design of large production, thousands upon thousands of gene fragments or proteins are adhered onto the chip; however, it has to avoid inaccuracy resulting from different gene fragments or proteins whose locations on the chip are too close. Thus, the precise control of the spots on the chip is very important. Moreover, the precise control requires expensive equipment, which restricts the application of the chip. Therefore, there is still a need for developing a bio-molecule database and test technique thereof, which possess advantages of more efficiency, low cost, and low limitation.
It is therefore the main purpose of the present invention to provide a convenient, inexpensive, and rapid method for producing a micro-carrier of bio-molecule (e.g. gene or protein), and a method for testing bio-molecules by using the micro-carrier.
Another purpose of the present invention is to provide a test method for identifying a bio-molecule, wherein the numbers and types of the known micro-carrier can be flexibly adjusted.
According to the method of the present invention, bar codes are patterned on a mask using an integrated circuit process; followed by exposure to a substrate coated with photoresist using photolithography. After etching and removing residual photoresist, the desired bar code can be formed on the substrate, and subsequently a nickel plate is thus electroformed. Before or after coating with bio-molecule binding material, a bead (Q-bot) is placed between two-nickel plates, and the bar code is then hot compressed onto the surface of the bead to form a microcake-like particle with bar code. Afterwards, each of the particles mentioned above are combined with the corresponding genes or proteins thereof to produce large amount of micro-carriers with labels. On the other hand, according to the method for testing bio-molecules described herein, large amounts of micro-carriers mentioned above are employed and the labeled (for example, fluorescence-labeled) unknown bio-molecules are mixed with the micro-carriers. The hybridization intensities of the fluorescence or different markers of the unknown bio-molecules thus are identified by the bar code on the micro-carrier via an image recognition system.